ice-Pod

Cool story. Actually, darn cold story.

http://robulack.wordpress.com/2009/04/30/ipod-emerges-from-ice-and-still-works/

Tick, tick tick boom

In case you weren't following it, the Newton, Apple's famously erratic PDA, hated by many, loved by a passionate few, is about to die.

Because of the way the clock system is set up, the Newton can only keep time until January 2010. Then...well some people who have set their clocks ahead have reported that the system crashes and needs a hard restore.

The patch which was under development by the community has proven to not be a workable solution, so Newton users are looking at the Calendar worriedly as we slowly make our way to the end of the year. Will this be the end of the plucky Newton? Tune in next week. Better yet, follow the goings on at http://myapplenewton.blogspot.com.

Deep thoughts, from Magnus S

A friend of mine, a late convert to the iPod revolution (we're still working on getting him off a PC...) has this interesting post about iPods and how they define who we are. Of course, his argument is more about the music held therein rather than the device itself, but interesting reading nonetheless.

Brainzzz

I know I'm a little late to the party, but...

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/163350/iwork_trojan_horse_may_be_turning_macs_into_zombies.html,

Yay! Our very own Zombie Botnet.

It's not a bug, it's a feature

Time for another Safari issue. This one with the built-in RSS reader.

I group my RSS feeds into folders: News, Photoshop, Writing, Design, Photography, Mac and Me, and then keep those folders in my bookmark bar, so I can see when there are new articles.

I know that smart people use Bloglines or Times or Google Reader or some other stand alone or web-based app, but I kinda like how I can just glance up while in Safari and see "ooh, new article."

Here's the deal. There are two articles that have shown up in my personal feed the last time it checked, and it is set to check every half an hour. These are friend's blogs, web comics...stuff like that. If I click on that say ten minutes after the reader checked, and there's another post by Peter, it will go out and get that, too.

But here's the deal. A lot of times, it will add that the the post count, but it won't subtract it. So my bookmark bar will tell me that I have one new article that hasn't been read, even if I read it.

I can refresh the feed, and it still won't go away. I can restart, and it won't go away. After a day or two, it finally goes away.

Yes, it is a small complaint, but it is really annoying when I'm waiting for a new Order of the Stick, and I look up and see that there's a new article in my personal feed and I click, only to discover that no, what I have is a stuck RSS reader again.

Some days, I love living in a small town

I've gone on at length in the past about stupid slow internet and stupid nearest Apple Authorized retailer being 800 km away, but despite what I've said, I love living in a small town. And here's another reason why.

In a big city, they investigate murders and theft of car. Here, an iPod Touch goes missing, and you get an officer assigned to the case.

And now, I have an iPod Touch returned in good order. Oh frabulous joy, Caloo, Calay (I know I mangled that....)

Drobo goes big

I'm a big fan of Drobo. Despite the proprietary nature of their system, I like the fact that it is drag and drop redundancy.

However, I am already looking at having to upscale my drives. And if I do manage to get my hands on that 5D Mk II I've been dreaming about, the drives will fill up even faster.

Well, Drobo has gone big with their new Drobo Pro, with twice the space and built in Gigabit ethernet.

Yes, it's still expensive for what basically amounts to a box for drives, and yes, I could do the same thing with a bunch of external drives. But I tried that. It didn't work. Not because of the way they worked, but because of the way I worked. The Drobo works, because it is dead simple. I don't have to change anything about the way I work.

Will I be getting one of these? Not right away. Despite the fact that my current Drobo is v. 1, it still is fine for the amount of pressure I put on it, at least for the next six to 12 months. But in a year or so, it's nice to know that I have this option. And then my current Drobo can go off-site, and maybe I can figure out a way to sync the two over the internet. Then I'd be Alex Lindsay cool....

Drinking the Kool-aid, taking the pill...

A friend of mine sent me this story about the iPod Touch, three days after mine was stolen.

Sheesh. Why not give me a paper cut and pour lemon juice on it while you're at it.

Stupid Smug Mac User

Okay, I'm trying not to be smug, but our internet is out at home so I'm at the library. The guy next to me is using a fancy new Vista machine, and is swearing under his breath. Two phone calls to tech support on how to get it working and he's still not having any luck. He's been asking me about my Mac. Little does he know that I'm one of *those* type of Mac users. But I'm playing it cool, telling him how reliable it is, and how simple it is, and he's getting into even more of a stew about Vista....I even dropped a bone about how Windows 7 is supposed to be "quite good".

There are some days I love what I do....